At last! We can finally switch from nailbiting into listening to the latest studio album from our Swedish friends Anekdoten! Right from opening track "From Within" you can hear the jazz influences in Peter Nordins' drum playing. The voice of Nicklas Berg often reminds me of the uncertain "timbre" of David Byrne, yet it alternates perfectly with the thick layers of mellotron and the repetetive character of the song. The music of Anekdoten is like the low and high tide of an untamed sea: far away yet so close, one time calm and peaceful the next ruthless, cunning and invincible. The hard Rickenbacker sounds of Jan Erik Liljestr?m beacon as it were the layers of mellotron whilst Nicklas adds little accents on guitar. What a song, what an opener for this album!

You could easily put the sticker "play loud" on a song like "Kiss Of Life" because this lifesaving sound comes pouring out of your speakers courtesy of even more mellotron, whilst drum and bass work alongside to create a hypnotising effect. I won't go into detail where the songs "Groundbound" and "Slow Fire" are concerned, as they differ very little from the recordings on the Live In Japan recording, maybe only the details can be heard better this time round. A very BIG song is without any doubt "Hole" with - I don't dare to say it anymore - even more majestic mellotron entertwined with superb sounding guitar from Nicklas, as if it concerns a precious painting from a renowed museum. Soft rippling, the song searches its way amidst a thrifty sonority where Simon Nordberg adds a little bit of Hammond, a most welcome acquisition to the sound of Anekdoten, which is getting better and better and sounding here as the best Pink Floyd ever.

In "Firefly," Nordberg is able to add some piano to the heavy bass, snareless toms and thin voices which are to be found in this repetetive pattern. The repeating heavy bass sounds of Jan Erik introduce "The Sun Absolute," a song with an eastern atmosphere which grows and grows until it reaches an explosive height, bursting open and letting it roll with all its power and homogenity. The goodbye song is "For Someone," a fragile acoustic song with Nicklas Berg accompanied only by sparse percussive colourings and a soft ? mellotron, completing the sound as if it were tiny snowflakes covering the ground.